


Magic Rivalry

by BlackBirdAolen



Category: Castlevania 白夜の協奏曲 | Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Intense Fight, Magic, TOME, Training, Training Room, alternative universe, fight, glyphs, whip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-04-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 04:53:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3837787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackBirdAolen/pseuds/BlackBirdAolen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shanoa and Juste are in for an intense training session - and they need it to make sure that they have the power for upcoming fights in them.</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="http://ask.fm/BlackBirdAolen">Got a fanfic idea for me?</a><br/><a href="http://cheroshseiphar.deviantart.com/">My deviantART - full of original fiction.</a><br/><a href="http://blackbirdaolen.tumblr.com/">Snippets and ramblings on my tumblr.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Magic Rivalry

Juste thumbed through the magic tomes in his possession, leaned back on one of the more comfortable sofas of the mansion. This crossroads in time and space was a curious one indeed. A mansion big enough to hold all of the Belmonts, while also offering space to associates and relatives of their clan. From all those timelines and decades, they had come together, and they also trained together. That, of course, had given Juste plenty of opportunity to train with other magic users. He did avoid Charlotte, though, ever since she had manage to turn him into a cat for several days, and he hadn’t quite forgiven her that quite yet. But then again, it was a challenge for him to become better to then beat Charlotte.

“Hello, Juste.” Juste looked up and smiled at the pale, dark-haired female who had entered the library. Shanoa was one of the few tough females living in the mansion now, and she was one of those magic users with an especially big prowess in all aspects of magic. She had earned quite the reputation amongst the Belmonts, especially for being one of the very few outside the Belmont clan to single-handedly hand Dracula his undead ass on a silver platter. Her usage and mastery of glyphs had reached such a stage that she was able to channel them with so little trouble that Juste and most of the others of the Belmont clan were not only in awe of her, but even feared her a little bit.

“Good evening, Shanoa. I thought you didn’t want to return until maybe in about a week? Or did your castle run end prematurely?”

Shanoa sighed, unceremoniously flopping down in a broad leather chair. “It did, yes. The castle provides to be a much tougher place than I had anticipated. Of course, it is an excellent way of training glyph aspects and the usage of all of them, but it still is quite frightening to think that there is something in that castle that could destroy you without as much as a second thought.”

“What do you mean exactly?” Juste furrowed his eyebrows at her words. “You sound like something big has awoken in the castle.”

“Well, yes and no.” Shanoa leaned back and shook her head lightly. “I can’t really describe it, and that is what’s troubling me. This way or another, I’m not ready to face whatever thing woke up in there quite yet. I think I will need a lot more training, preferably with someone having mastered both weaponry and magic to a certain degree.” Shanoa gave Juste an almost teasing grin. “I thought of you, Juste.”

Juste blinked and closed his tome, looking at her with a slightly suspicious expression. “You think that I would be fit to train with you? I don’t know, Shanoa. I am not exactly as powerful a mage as you are. You’ve already excelled me by far, so there is no way that I will hold up in training against you for a long time.”

“That’s not the main concern from my side. I don’t want someone matching me in magic. If so, I would have asked Yoko Belnades, or even Charlotte Aulin. But in this case, I want to fight against a balanced fighter such as yourself. The other Belmonts are all more inclined towards the physical side. And that is not quite what I’m looking for. I would be able to beat them with little effort, if I focussed entirely on my abilities.” Shanoa chuckled quietly. “Well, that might be a bit of a stretch there, and a boast, but I think that if I unleashed my full magic potential onto them, I would be winning too easily.”

Juste couldn’t help laughing now. “Oh, you better never let them hear that. They would tear your to pieces, regardless of who you are and how you are performing overall. They have their pride, after all. And I have mine, too. But if I manage to hold my ground against you, I suppose I just prove that I am able to keep up with you, and not all the others.”

Shanoa nodded slowly. She stood, brushing off her clothes and smirking at Juste. “Well, do you think you can hold up against me in a training fight right now? I’m itching to get some practice, so you better not have promised too much, Juste Belmont.”

Something about the self-secure way Shanoa displayed gave Juste a bit of a nervous grumbling in the pit of his stomach. Shanoa was strong, if not stronger than him, and that was quite clear. But he had never been directly pitted against her in a training fight, so there was that. He still could surprise himself, but it was quite possible that Shanoa would give him the ass-whooping of his lifetime. Not that he was intending to let that happen and not struggle against it, though. He would give Shanoa a hard time, of that he would make sure. And that was a promise not only to himself, but to the name of the Belmont clan itself.

They picked one of the more sturdy training rooms, expecting to deliver fully developed magic blows to one another. That would mean that the room had to take a good beating, too, since most of the magic blows were expected to land there instead on one another. Juste looked around, nodding to himself. “This should hold. I really hope that we don’t accidentally find a way of blowing the whole mansion to pieces. That would be a bit embarrassing.”

“It would be, yes.” Shanoa shook her head, then lifted her hands, the glyphs on her hands glowing in a soft orange colour. “Are you ready, Juste Belmont? Or are you still undecided?”

“I’m as ready as I can be.” Juste drew his whip and summoned one of the tomes bonded to him. “I won’t hold back.”

And what a magical duel it was. They went right at it right away. Juste stuck to ice spells as of the moment, which Shanoa countered with a storm of flames. The rapid changes in temperature between the waves of spells were testing on their own, so it was even harder to fully focus on evading every blow they dealt to one another. But they soon enough mixed it up with different kinds of magic. Electricity, boulders, even shadow and light magic lashed at one another, filling the room with the smell of ozone and young flowers, but also with an eerily sulphuric smell which seemed to come right from Hell. And still, they were only warming up.

Juste found himself surprisingly able to counter most of Shanoa’s glyph attacks, and even break through her defence several times. Shanoa had to work hard to keep up with him, but she too possessed some glyphs and attack patterns he could barely evade or counter in any way or form. He grunted and tried his best to not let his exhaustion show too soon, but it was quite hard to do that. Shanoa was giving him a hard time, and she was not too bad at making him feel like he was being at the verge of losing to her.

The elemental powers clashing were one thing, the weapons another. Shanoa’s glyphs permitting her to wield various weapons were just as dangerous as her powerful elemental spells, and Juste had to devise a strategy instantly to really be able to counter it. The room was already taking quite the punishment, but it held their magical attacks in, which was good. The bad thing about the fight was that it did get unbalanced very fast from Juste’s end. He didn’t have Shanoa’s magical regeneration capabilities. He had to rely more on his whip and secondary throwing weapons then, while Shanoa could just blast him with more magic. Though then again, she had to watch out, too.

They fought all over the room, using every bit of leverage they could get over one another, but ultimately, they would always find themselves slipping back into an equal or maybe even inferior position. Juste grit his teeth and tried to overpower Shanoa, but he never quite succeeded. Any time he thought he had the slightest bit of advantage over her, he caught himself messing up and having to struggle to not be completely overwhelmed. By the time they would be finished (which didn’t seem to be the case any time soon), the room would be an interesting sight indeed.

A brief pause in their fight left them panting on opposite sides of the room. Shanoa’s glyphs were filling the air with a pulsing sensation, and Juste felt like the adrenaline in his system was the only thing keeping him upright and the pain of overstrained muscles away from him. He was used to extensive fights, but not to such extensive ones. Shanoa was giving him a harder time than all the demons he had encountered so far, and that was probably even for the best. If he could pull through this training session, then the castle would appear as much less frightening to him. And some more experience never hurt to gather.

“Done already?” Shanoa was panting, but she had a smile on her face, which was pretty rare for her, at least in this intensity. “I really hope you’re not about to give up yet. This is far too enjoyable to stop already.”

“Enjoyable, you call that?” Juste laughed and shook his head lightly. “You’re crazy.” He snapped his whip forward and grinned. “But I have to admit, I never was quite given a nice beating like you gave it up until now. This is the kind of training I have been missing.”

Juste grinned, then they clashed once more. It took them a while to notice the observers that had gathered lined up against the wall of the training room – one of the only parts where the magic hadn’t damaged the wall yet. They both gave it their all, and delivered a quite impressive show, but in the end, they both were too exhausted to really keep up the fight until a winner was determined.

Shanoa helped Juste walk back to the study, or maybe it was the other way round. Or both ways. Juste couldn’t really tell. But when they finally sat down, they both went straight to sleep, knocked flat by the sheer amount of magic they had used in a try to pulverize one another. But, hey, that sort of training was the sort really paying off in the end.


End file.
